Okay the school semester is over and I'm making plans for being able to camp with the kids at SCA events next year. I've traded with a friend for a modern tent (10 man, I traded a Doumbek for it). I still have to pick the tent up and make room to store it along with the rest of the camping stuff I'll be gathering over the next few months. Clearing out space in the attic over the next week or so. I have another friend offering me a couple cots. I've been gifted a lantern for outside (wood w/ candle) and an electric lantern for inside the tent (battery powered). Its a start. We don't have room to cart a lot, but I want to make sure we at least have what we need for my city kids to be comfortable and not cranky so more fun is had for all.
One thing I've thought a lot about is feeding ourselves there. One kid is a semi vegetarian (he eats fish only) and the other kid is a meat eater so not only do I have to consider their tastes/needs, I also have to find the best way to store the most (they are both around teen ages, so hearty eaters) without needing to use a cooler.
I have been looking at several options. Dehydrated foods (hoping to pick up a dehydrator this week to start trying out some of this), vacuum sealing (I just bought a handheld sealer online along with attachments for sealing regular and wide mouthed jars), and pressure canned meats (need to get a good pressure cooker). With well stored dry goods, and along with the medieval spices research I've been doing (another post coming on that), I figure I should be able to have a good bit of versatility in my meal planning.
The first thing I think I'd going to prep is bases for soups and stews. For example chicken and veggie stock. Now I know I could just freeze them, but that would still required cold storage at events. For this reason I plan to experiment with making my own stock powders that I can just rehydrate as I need them. This is easy enough with the veggie stock because I can just dehydrate the veggies desperately and then mix them for powdering. The chicken stock option took some research because its need to be cooked to a liquid state and then gelled when cooled. I did find mention of removing the fat and then cooking the stock down to a paste that can then be placed on the fruit leather trays on a dehydrator. I plan to try this and see how it works. I'm a big fan of slow cooker meals so I have been looking at chicken recipes that I could later turn into batches of broth. I want to keep the broth simple so I can add whatever spices later I want to without flavors clashing. I found some good recipes for slow cooker chicken though I'd like to play with using more period spices then the recipes I've found call for. After the family is done with the chicken then I'll take to bones a make me some broth. :)
The best recipe I found was this one (see vid below) which uses apples as one of the ingredients which seemed much milder taste (I was thinking of the neutralish stock I needed for later) then the others which were using lemons. I don't have the chicken stock she asks for, but I do have some veggie stock left I think, so I'll just use that instead. I don't think I'm going to add the mushrooms this time. Thing #2 is not fond of them so since this is her first time having chicken this way best to add as many "preteen disapproved" things as possible. I'm also going to play with the spices a bit, maybe hit the Spice House today to get some of the period spices I've been wanting.
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